[frizzen]

That's looking great. I probably wouldn't even touch the paint, it looks like an older tight jobsite / offroad work truck, they get dinged and scratched even being really careful. About all i'd probably do would be see if the grill would clean up.

That's a pretty slick way to do the bed actuator. I'm probably going to steal that idea...

There are some steering rod upgrade kits for wpl, or you can roll your own with turnbuckle parts and all-thread.

If it's able to tip a 5lb weight, i'd want to look into the leaf spring upgrades that use metal mounts, better springs, and have shackles.

I think the wheels look good, especially those duallies. It's not a street tread and has plenty of sidewall. The lego tires you mention are about the same height and width as wpl with a larger rim size. I think legos would only shave like 4-6 mm height from your setup. There are some 3d printable rims to go wpl hub to lego.

For your lighting, there are several plug&play options that go inline with ch 1&2 that can give headlight, tail light, turn, brake, rev. I think the light control system i'm running for the normal lights in my ambulance was about $15